Really awesome write-up. The OCInception challenge is based around creating a self-replicating Podman image archive that, when loaded, produces another image which in turn produces yet another, etc.

The author digs deep into Podman. The end result is a image down to just 393 bytes by careful minimalism and leveraging internal behaviors.

Learned a lot from this: how small details in archive structure and format can dramatically affect size. The bonus part on the executable is just a huge cherry on top of everything.